One of the things that we're looking at is a life course model. For example, on the health promotion, population health point of view, we're looking at young parents and helping them to parent better, to maintain programs in schools that are free from bullying, and that present cultural activities and language and some of the other things so that self-esteem is built up very strongly in the community.
And it's early identification. Part of that hope, health, and healing program is to help individuals in the communities, leaders and caregivers, to identify people who are headed towards a crisis where substance use is an issue. Early identification is absolutely critical, and it's bringing people into some kind of care early on before things are really challenging.
We know, for example, that almost half of the women incarcerated in the province of B.C. are aboriginal and first nations women, and a lot of that comes out of those social determinants of health. How did they get to the point where they were in a crisis that was bad enough that they ended up incarcerated? I think we missed lots of opportunities on the prevention side.
The closer we can get to communities with the services we provide, the better off we are. In B.C., because of the geography and the rural and remote nature of many of our communities, the provision of high levels of care are very challenging. Even primary care is a real challenge to get to those community levels.
It's working with people who are going to the community, our remote certified nurses or nurse practitioners and the itinerant physicians and other caregivers, and helping them to identify individuals who may need help and to set up a helping plan for them in the community. Then, if the community-level services can't provide the care that's needed...to be able to bring people out. In the past a lot of people were brought out and never went home. They came out, were institutionalized, and never had a chance to go home. So we need to make sure that whole circle is there.